Coldhands
by Acharion
Summary: Wherein we learn the identity of Coldhands (and he's not Benjen Stark).


It all belongs to Tolkien and Martin.

* * *

I'd wandered long. So long I could not count the years any more. I'd remained by the ocean for many of them and watched Elrond, and Artanis, and even the Ring Bearers that I'd heard so much about pass into the peaceful realm of Aman. I had watched my grandfather, and my father, and all of my brothers fall out of existence, one by one, like a slow motion fall of dominos. But I could not sail. I could not allow myself such indulgence and even if I could, I would never be forgiven for all the wrongs I'd done.

From holding my Silmaril one last time, the wergild and creation of my father, the very object I'd shaped my life around, my hands had been burned so severely that they were little more than blackened claws. Never again would I play my beloved harp, even in the mourning for Arda Marred.

So I'd wandered. My hands were not so incapacitated that they could not move, and I'd been able to find food and care for myself. But they remained black. No matter what I did, they remained black. A constant reminder of the wrongs that I'd committed. Forever painful. Forever burning.

I longed for death. I prayed for it to whatever deities might still hear the pleadings of the Fëanorions. Thinking of Maedhros and how he'd taken his own life after feeling the pain the Silmarils brought us I thought that maybe I would have the courage to do so as well. I'd put a blade to my wrist more than once, ready to watch crimson blood fall silently on the sand. But I had never been able to steel my will enough to actually end my miserable life.

And although I ached, when The End came, I was not ready for it. Some strange sliver of self-preservation made me hide from the darkening skies and the surging seas. I'd been on the beach when it came. At first I'd just thought it another storm. No matter, I'd endured a million lifetimes of them. But the sky had turned black like my hands, and the salty water had hurtled itself against me with a vigor I did not recognize. And I knew The End had come. The Dagor Dagorath that we had been warned of. This end of times that should have signaled to me that my doom must finally be answered.

But I fled. I know that in my life I have been good at fleeing. From Aman, from my Gap burned to ruin, from Himring finally seized by Morgoth's forces, from Ereb to regain our stolen treasures. From Beleriand, sunk beneath Ulmo's waters. I'd fled in terror from the destruction of them all. But could I flee from this?

After days in the empty woods that fenced in the sea, I knew that I could not.

I ran, mad and fearful until two silent forms came before me. One cloaked and hooded, the other in bright shining plate mail. Mandos and Eönwë, herald of Manwë. Was there no one left that I had failed to anger in my wrongdoings? They came before me in the deserted forests, where I thought I'd been alone. Where I'd thought I was safe.

I had seen both of them before, in wholly different times and spaces of course, but I knew them. They stood before me silently, but diminished somehow. Mandos was ethereal, a mist before my eyes. And Eönwë's armor did not shine as bright as it had in the aftermath of the War of Wrath. Still, I knew I could not force my feet to turn away from them. Their thoughts drew me forward and I knelt, as I never would have done in a life lost years ago. I would lie at their feet, if only that my father's sprit might finally be awakened again.

"This is the end of all things, is it not?" I asked them, terrified, trembling, crumpled before those I'd openly mocked and betrayed before. My voice was a quivering vibration of the glory that it had once been, broken down by long years of disuse, sullied by tears.

"It is the battle you've heard of." Mandos answered. "But maybe not the end of all things."

"But if Arda is to be remade, and I am still here…."

Eönwë's voice was not as strong as I recalled it from the camp where we'd taken the Silmarils, but commanding all the same "You shall be remade for a different purpose, son of Fëanor."

"But Ilúvatar…." Had I not spoken in so long that I could no longer form a semblance of a coherent sentence?

"The Allfather loves all of his creations, even those that might at times bring him pain."

"You have dwelt long upon these lands, far more tiring than your time in my halls might have been" Mandos answered. "You shall answer your doom in a new world."

"I, I don't understand. Will you throw me beyond the door to the Darkness?"

"The Door has been broken. So perhaps not a door, but a Wall." How could they throw me behind a wall? Were even the Valar that strong?

"And maybe you will not understand for many ages to come," said Eönwë. "You have a fondness for children, we have heard. And perhaps you shall come to understand a hint of your brother's gifts."

I didn't understand at all. "Maitimo?" I asked reluctantly, desperate for any clarification.

"Take your sword, Makalaurë, and meet your awakening." The name that I had not been in called in so long roused me, and although fear stirred my stomach into a churning swirl, I stood. A sword, finer make than I had seen in a great many years was sunk into the ground at Eönwë's feet.

I was terrified, but I pressed my blackened hands around the hilt and waited. I thought I'd feel some transcendence, some sort of rebirth. But my vision just clouded with powdery white snowflakes.

I awoke on the ground, face-down in some cool granular substance I didn't immediately recognize, and thought that I must have been struck blind. But a strange sort of blindness, for instead of being shrouded in darkness, I was surrounded by white. Stark white intensity that for many moments blocked out any other sensation. I sprang to my feet, terrified of being remade so helpless in a new form. But moments passed and I realized that I could, in fact, see. Dark looming trees surrounded me, enveloping me in strangling embrace. And nothing but snow and more snow and ice, hanging off of every branch, shimmering even in the dim light.

I studied myself, against the harsh backdrop of paleness. I felt taller somehow, like the ground rested farther away from my head than it had before. I could feel in the muscles of my arms and legs that I was not as emaciated and wraith-like as my former body had become. I felt emboldened, empowered. I had been made anew, just as Eönwë had said I would be. But when I stripped the thick leather gloves from my hands, they were still blackened. Not burns anymore but congealed blood darkening the fair skin that had once played songs for the greatest of the Noldor.

If I had not been made anew in a greater form, in some strange part of Aman, then where was I?

Was this the Helcaraxë? Fingon had once wanted me to make a song of it, and had described it to me. He had painted a picture of barren wastelands of ice, nothing to see for miles, churning under their feet. And the cold. He had described to me the bitter cold they'd endured. "I thought I'd never be able to be warm again." He'd said. But I didn't feel cold. Cool perhaps, an awareness that my surroundings were chilly, but not cold. Not the bone-wrenching, aching cold Fingon had described. And there had been no trees there. They didn't see trees until they crossed. So where was I?

I was grateful the sword I'd put my hands to was at my side. "Maitimo?" A childish plea to the Valar I cried out into the vast empty space. My voice was lower in pitch than I had expected it to be and it echoed hollowly. But it was not as cracked and worn as it had been when I had last spoken. "Maitimo!" They had told me I would understand my brother's gifts, perhaps Maedhros was there?

And suddenly he was. A dark shape against the shifting trees, his height almost unmistakable to me. He watched me, for many moments unmoving and I wondered why he wouldn't come to me. Why would he fear his own brother, lost for so long? "Maitimo?"

Suddenly there were other shapes among the trees. Vague forms that seemed to shift the dim light of this strange land away from their bodies. My brothers? Had I perhaps been delivered to Mandos' Halls to be reunited with them?

I looked to Maitimo again, and he stared back at me. Something was wrong, though I could not put my finger on it at first. An incongruence that stuck with me through long ages of separation.

Blue eyes. The shape had blue eyes. Maitimo had the grey eyes of our people. Just as bright as the figure that appeared before me, but an entirely different shade.

And just as I understood this, it rushed at me with a terrifying swiftness, a silver sword glistening with ice held aloft.

Was this Maitimo? Was this some sort of test? My commitment to the Valar judged by whether or not I would be able to place a sword to my brother's breast? But as the figure descended upon me from the trees I knew that it was not my Maitimo. The illusion passed from dream to nightmare in a fleeting second. I unsheathed my sword and met it head on. From dead lips it issued a keening wail and once again I feared for my life, little though it might be, just as I had in Middle Earth.

And just as our swords, blades of white ice and silver steel, were about to touch, a rushing force intercepted us. A black shape so massive and destructive I could only think of Morgoth. But it raged against my opponent and ignored me. I stood aside as I watched the mass, which I suddenly recognized as a massive elk, tear the strange shade to bits, battering it's hooves into the fallen form until the cold blue light in its eyes were extinguished. No blood came stained the snow all around us, or the elk's giant legs. The creature he had battled had been dead once before.

The elk snorted, as if asking for my thanks, alerting me that it had done a better job than I would have been able to do.

And then it came to me.

The elk nuzzled it's snout into my face, hot air from his nostrils melting the snow that clung to my eyelashes.

My knees almost bucked with the understanding of Eönwë's words. I had not been blessed with Maedhros' gifts, but Celegorm's. Animals would come to me and would maybe even guard me on this new journey. "And perhaps you shall come to understand a hint of your brother's gifts." A hint, he had said. A hint would be enough.

As the other shades I had seen dissolved into the shadows of the trees, the elk knelt on its front legs as if bidding me to ride.

Was this how Fingon had felt, to ride on the back on an eagle so graceful you could not feel the movement? So it was with this elk. It was towering, enormous and yet I realized I had been remade large enough to ride it. The powerful muscles of the beast surged beneath my thighs, seemingly invulnerable to weariness. I clutched at its fur like reigns, leading it where my subconscious thoughts wished to go.

The beast must have borne me for many hours. Northwards, I think, though it was hard to tell with the sunlight so dim in the sky.

We came, at last, to a tree, so vast and towering I thought it must have been the remnants of Telperion or Laurelin. Vines without leaves swirled around it so thick that the trunk was barely visible. Knotted roots dug into the hard soil with angry determination, burrowing into the ground.

And a woman stood before it. Her golden hair hung almost to the ground, and the bright green of her sleeveless dress was a stark contrast to the white and grey landscape that surrounded me. Despite the snow, she stood barefoot upon the ground, layers of silk swirling around her pale toes.

The elk calmed its frenzied flee before her, seemed to bask in her radiance, and knelt once again, as if commanding me to dismount.

No flowers sprung at her feet, but I knew her instantly.

"Yavanna?" Were the Valar here to question me again?

"Yes, and no, son of Fëanor." She replied. Her voice was earthier, more resounding than I had expected. A sound befitting the prowess of the Valar.

'You called me here, did you not?" she nodded. "Then why?"

"To learn many things. Things we could not have shared with you before the very substance of the world was undone. To teach you all that you must know on your new path. Guidance that you, Makalaurë, had ignored in the past. But you shall heed my words now, after the breaking of the earth, after the breaking of your vow."

I had not noticed before, but there was a lightness in my chest that I had not felt for many long ages. It was a strange sensation, one that I would need time to explore. In the past I had welcomed the very pain that haunted me, but now it was gone. Blown away when I was remade.

"The Doom that was laid before you does not entirely rest." Yavanna spoke, as if reading my thoughts. And my heart sunk. My heart? Was it even beating anymore in my chest? I could not feel it, but I supposed it must have been there for me to be moving. But even when I turned my thoughts most inward, seeking out the pulse that had incessantly beat out the rhythm to my existence for so long, I could not hear it. Was I living but still somehow dead?

"Yes and no, son of Fëanor." She answered again, somehow still peering into the dark depths of my mind. "You will heed our wishes now."

And before I had time to think upon my actions, I sunk one knee into the bright white know that somehow bothered me naught, unsheathed my sword, and laid the pommel to rest against my forehead.

"I swear to you, Yavanna, most blessed among all those we hold sacred, that I will bind your will to mine."

"Oh child," she laughed, "have you not really come to see how blind oaths may hold you to actions you wish not to undertake?"

I was abashed, for obviously my word in oath should not be trusted. Or maybe should be trusted against all others.

"No, I wish no vows from you, only understanding. Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, Stranger. "

"What?"

"The new gods." She whispered. "And the old." And she motioned to the tree that stood so stately behind her.

"I don't see…"

"Manwë, Varda, Tulkas, Vána, Aulë, Nienna, Mandos." She said quietly.

Names I recognized, of course, but I didn't see what the Valar had to do with the words she had just spoken.

"Come, child, one last time into my halls. You will not be welcomed here again."

Many things I was taught about the reshaping of the world. I was cast out, not into the Void of Darkness that I had so long feared, but into a shifting world of white, of ice and snow. With some distaste, I learned that the Secondborn had become strong again, and it was these very people I must defend.

Aman was gone, destroyed in the Dagor Dagorath, a distant and mysterious land that the people who I was to protect called Valyria. Were they so uncreative as that? But I knew that if Aman was destroyed then my father and my brothers and all the friends I'd once known must be lost as well.

"Lost? Yes." Answered Yavanna gravely. "But they were all reborn before the end, making many great things that are still treasured upon this land. Languages and works that are prized above all others. They ended in peace. Their end was not painful except for those that withstood what was inevitable." My kin would not have stood aside as the inevitable came. So I knew that my father and brothers, without me to stand with them, must not have died peacefully as Yavanna said, but withered once again against the inevitable forces that beset them.

I could not weep for them. I found my tears were gone.

"The gems you coveted so highly, all three, have been found." She said one day. A simple statement, but laced with so many other accusations and undertones. "They have been reworked, and fire will someday issue from them."

That was a small comfort at least. The life achievement of my father would not go unnoticed in this new land. But fire? Light more beautiful than any fire had come from them before.

"Just as they brought a doom to you, they will bring a more terrible one to their current owners."

The Oath was purged from me, but I could not imagine a more terrible outcome than the one that my family had endured.

I was not myself anymore. The wraith that I thought would be delivered had simply been set down in another landscape. A cold mass of meat that reeked of the fate I was doomed to inhabit. Dead, maybe, though Yavanna would not confirm or deny my questions. "You have a way with children" she'd repeated to me, time and time again, simply echoing the mysterious words that Eönwë had spoken.

I departed Yavanna's halls feeling little more enlightened than I'd entered. I knew the history of this new world, of course. Of the race for the crown, of the treachery that besieged the kingdoms, of the dark spirits with bright blue eyes I'd seen, of the black brotherhood that protected the realms of men from the darkness that lurked in the North (Morgoth perhaps? She would not tell me.)

"Few others will understand you as I do, Makalaurë." She'd said and outfitted me in black raiment that covered my face and darkened hands.

And thusly clothed, I'd set off riding this elk that seemed oddly eager to be bent to my will, a swath of ravens now following behind us, ready to aid in the fight in whatever little way I could.

* * *

Maitimo Maedhros

Makalaurë Maglor

No character tag for Coldhands? Madness.

Hope you enjoyed this strange little thing that tumbled out of my mind the other day!


End file.
